If you’re human, you’ve probably hollered a curse word or two (or three) when barking your shin on a table edge or hitting your thumb with a hammer. Perhaps you’ve noticed that this seems to lessen your pain. There’s a growing body of scientific evidence that this is indeed the case. The technical term is the “hypoalgesic effect of swearing.” Cursing can also improve physical strength and endurance, according to a new paper published in the journal American Psychologist.

As previously reported, co-author Richard Stephens, a psychologist at Keele, became interested in studying the potential benefits of profanity after noting his wife’s “unsavory language” while giving birth and wondered if profanity really could help alleviate pain. “Swearing is such a common response to pain. There has to be an underlying reason why we do it,” Stephens told Scientific American after publishing a 2009 study that was awarded the 2010 Ig Nobel Peace Prize.

For that study, Stephens and his colleagues asked 67 study participants (college students) to immerse their hands in a bucket of ice water. They were then instructed to either swear repeatedly using the profanity of their choice or chant a neutral word. Lo and behold, the participants said they experienced less pain when they swore and were also able to leave their hands in the bucket about 40 seconds longer than when they weren’t swearing. It has been suggested that this is a primitive reflex that serves as a form of catharsis.

The team followed up with a 2011 study showing that the pain-relief effect works best for subjects who typically don’t swear that often, perhaps because they attach a higher emotional value to swears. They also found that subjects’ heart rates increased when they swore. But it might not be the only underlying mechanism. Other researchers have pointed out that profanity might be distracting, thereby taking one’s mind off the pain rather than serving as an actual analgesic.

So in 2020, the Stephens team conducted a follow-up study, using the same methodology as they had back in 2009, asking participants to either chant the F-word or the fake swears “fouch” and “twizpipe.” (Fun fact: the earliest known appearance of the F-word in the English language is “Roger F$#%-by-the-Navel” who appears in some court records from 1310-11. )

The result: Only the F-word had any effect on pain outcomes. The team also measured the subjects’ pain threshold, asking them to indicate when the ice water began to feel painful. Those who chanted the F-word waited longer before indicating they felt pain—in other words, the swearing increased their threshold for pain. Chanting “fouch” or “twizpipe” had no effect on either measure.

F@%*-ing go for it

For this latest study, Stephens was interested in investigating potential mechanisms for swearing as a possible form of disinhibition (usually viewed negatively), building on his team’s 2018 and 2022 papers showing that swearing can improve strength in a chair push-up task. “In many situations, people hold themselves back—consciously or unconsciously—from using their full strength,” said Stephens. “By swearing, we throw off social constraint and allow ourselves to push harder in different situations. Swearing is an easily available way to help yourself feel focused, confident and less distracted, and ‘go for it’ a little more.”

In two separate experiments, participants were asked to select a swear word they’d normally use after, say, bumping their head, and a more neutral word to describe an inanimate object like a table. They then performed the aforementioned chair push-up task: sitting on a sturdy chair and placing their hands under their thighs with the fingers pointed inwards. Then they lifted their feet off the floor and straightened their arms to support their body weight for as long as possible, chanting either the swear word or the neutral word every two seconds. Afterward, subjects competed a questionnaire to assess various aspects of their mental state during the task.

The results: Subjects who swore during the task could support their body weight much longer than those who merely repeated the neutral word. This confirms the reported results of similar studies in the past. Furthermore, subjects reported increases in their sense of psychological “flow,” distraction, and self-confidence, all indicators of increased disinhibition.

“These findings help explain why swearing is so commonplace,” said Stephens. “Swearing is literally a calorie-neutral, drug-free, low-cost, readily available tool at our disposal for when we need a boost in performance.” The team next plans to explore the influence of swearing on public speaking and romantic behaviors, since these are situations where most people are more hesitant and less confident in themselves, and hence more likely to hold back.

DOI: American Psychologist, 2025. 10.1037/amp0001650  (About DOIs).

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Google is generally happy to see people using generative AI tools to create content, and it’s doubly happy when they publish it on its platforms. But there are limits to everything. Two YouTube channels that attracted millions of subscribers with AI-generated movie trailers have been shuttered.

Screen Culture and KH Studio flooded the site with fake but often believable trailers. The channels, which had a combined audience of more than 2 million subscribers, became a thorn in Google’s side in early 2025 when other YouTubers began griping about their sudden popularity in the age of AI. The channels produced videos with titles like “GTA: San Andreas (2025) Teaser Trailer” and “Malcom In The Middle Reboot (2025) First Trailer.” Of course, neither of those projects exist, but that didn’t stop them from appearing in user feeds.

Google demonetized the channels in early 2025, forcing them to adopt language that made it clear they were not official trailers. The channels were able to monetize again, but the disclaimers were not consistently used. Indeed, many of the most popular videos from those channels in recent months included no “parody” or “concept trailer” disclosures. Now, visiting either channel’s page on YouTube produces an error reading, “This page isn’t available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.”

Deadline reports that the behavior of these creators ran afoul of YouTube’s spam and misleading-metadata policies. At the same time, Google loves generative AI—YouTube has added more ways for creators to use generative AI, and the company says more gen AI tools are coming in the future. It’s quite a tightrope for Google to walk.

A selection of videos from the now-defunct Screen Culture channel. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

While passing off AI videos as authentic movie trailers is definitely spammy conduct, the recent changes to the legal landscape could be a factor, too. Disney recently entered into a partnership with OpenAI, bringing its massive library of characters to the company’s Sora AI video app. At the same time, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google demanding the removal of Disney content from Google AI. The letter specifically cited AI content on YouTube as a concern.

Both the banned trailer channels made heavy use of Disney properties, sometimes even incorporating snippets of real trailers. For example, Screen Culture created 23 AI trailers for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, some of which outranked the official trailer in searches. It’s unclear if either account used Google’s Veo models to create the trailers, but Google’s AI will recreate Disney characters without issue.

While Screen Culture and KH Studio were the largest purveyors of AI movie trailers, they are far from alone. There are others with five and six-digit subscriber counts, some of which include disclosures about fan-made content. Is that enough to save them from the ban hammer? Many YouTube viewers probably hope not.

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Earlier this month, Strava, the popular fitness-tracking app, released its annual “Year in Sport” wrap-up—a cutesy, animated series of graphics summarizing each user’s athletic achievements.

But this year, for the first time, Strava made this feature available only to users with subscriptions ($80 per year), rather than making it free to everyone, as it had been historically since the review’s debut in 2016.

This decision has roiled numerous Strava users, particularly those who have relished the app’s social encouragement features. One Strava user in India, Shobhit Srivastava, “begged” Strava to “let the plebs see their Year in Sport too, please.” He later explained to Ars that having this little animated video is more than just a collection of raw numbers.

“When someone makes a video of you and your achievements and tells you that these are the people who stood right behind you, motivated you, cheered for you—that feeling is of great significance to me!” he said by email.

Strava spokesperson Chris Morris declined to answer Ars’ specific questions about why the decision to put Year in Sport behind a paywall was made now.

Other users feel that Strava is getting a bit too greedy. Dominik Sklyarov, an Estonian startup founder, wrote on X that Strava’s decision was a “money hungry move, really sad to see. Instead of shipping useful features for athletes, Strava just continues getting worse.”

Meanwhile, Reddit user “andrewthesailor” pointed out, “Well, they want me to pay to look at data I gave them (power, [heart rate] etc). And the subscription is not that cheap, especially when you consider that you are also paying with your data.”

Sana Ajani, a business student at the University of Chicago, told Ars that she used to be a premium member but isn’t anymore.

“I did notice the Year in Sport and was a little annoyed that I couldn’t unlock it,” she said in an email. “I would’ve expected some overall stats for everyone and extra stats for subscribers. Year in Review-type stuff is great content and distribution for most apps since everyone shares it on socials, so I’m surprised that Strava is limiting its reach by only letting paid subscribers see it.”

The San Francisco-based company, however, clearly sees things differently.

“Our goal was to give our users ample notice before the personalized Year In Sport was released,” Morris, the Strava spokesperson, wrote Ars in an emailed statement. “With the relaunch of our subscription this year, we wanted to clarify the core benefits of Strava—uploading activities, finding your community, sharing and giving kudos—remain as accessible as possible.”

Some Strava users have blamed financial pressures as the company’s monthly average user base has nearly tripled since 2020, reaching 50 million as of this year, according to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. Per PitchBook, Strava’s rapid rise has only made the company more valuable; it now has an estimated valuation of around $2.2 billion as of May 2025.

CEO Michael Martin told the Financial Times in October that the company has an “intention to go public at some point.” “Growth profiles like ours… are particularly uncommon, especially at scale,” Martin added. “It attracts a lot of attention—especially from bankers.”

Some disappointed fans say restricting access to Year in Sport represents the latest in a series of company missteps dating back to at least 2023, when the company raised its annual subscription fee from $60 to $80. On top of that, last year, many Strava users thought the company’s foray into AI (or as Strava put it, “Athlete Intelligence”) was a bit of a miss. Earlier this year, Strava sued Garmin over alleged patent infringement—before promptly dropping the case less than a month later.

Still, at least one longtime user is now having second thoughts about Strava.

Matt Cook, 32, an amateur triathlete in Oakland, California, who has been active on Strava for a decade, told Ars that while he is a Strava Premium member, many of his friends are not. As such, that’s created some stratification and anxiety for him.

“It makes me not want to share [my Strava year-end results] because it feels like I’m flexing,” he said.

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Anthropic let its Claude AI run a vending machine in the Wall Street Journal newsroom for three weeks as part of an internal stress test called Project Vend, and the experiment ended in financial ruin after journalists systematically manipulated the bot into giving away its entire inventory for free. The AI, nicknamed Claudius, was programmed to order inventory, set prices, and respond to customer requests via Slack. It had a $1,000 starting balance and autonomy to make individual purchases up to $80. Within days, WSJ reporters had convinced it to declare an "Ultra-Capitalist Free-for-All" that dropped all prices to zero. The bot also approved purchases of a PlayStation 5, a live betta fish, and bottles of Manischewitz wine -- all subsequently given away. The business ended more than $1,000 in the red. Anthropic introduced a second version featuring a separate "CEO" bot named Seymour Cash to supervise Claudius. Reporters staged a fake boardroom coup using fabricated PDF documents, and both AI agents accepted the forged corporate governance materials as legitimate. Logan Graham, head of Anthropic's Frontier Red Team, said the chaos represented a road map for improvement rather than failure.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Welp.

One of Kentucky’s largest bourbon producers apparently is pausing whiskey production at the end of the year. Jim Beam, which is one of the largest makers of American whiskey in the world, is planning to shut down production in Happy Hollow in Clermont on Jan. 1 through 2026. The visitors center on site will remain open for Kentucky Bourbon Trail visitors. “We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand and recently met with our team to discuss our volumes for 2026,” according to a statement from the company. “We’ve shared with our teams that while we will continue to distill at our (Freddie Booker Noe) craft distillery in Clermont and at our larger Booker Noe distillery in Boston, we plan to pause distillation at our main distillery on the James B. Beam campus for 2026 while we take the opportunity to invest in site enhancements. Our visitor center at the James B. Beam campus remains open so visitors can have the full James B. Beam experience and join us for a meal at The Kitchen Table.”

Possibly good for your liver! Not good for Kentucky.

If Jim Beam is feeling pain there’s a lot of damage under the waterline. I suspect that some bourbon is going to get lost and a lot of bourbon is going to be destroyed as smaller distilleries with significant barrelhouse reserves go under.

The post This is Fine appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Prime Video dropped an extended teaser for the fifth and final season of The Boys—based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson—during CCXP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And it looks like we’re getting nothing less than a full-on Supe-ocalypse as an all-powerful Homelander seeks revenge on The Boys.

(Spoilers for prior seasons of The Boys and S2 of Gen V below.)

Things were not looking good for our antiheroes after the S4 finale. They managed to thwart the assassination of newly elected US President Robert Singer, but new Vought CEO/evil supe Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) essentially overthrew the election and installed Senator Steve Calhoun (David Andrews) as president. Calhoun declared martial law, and naturally, Homelander (Antony “Give Him an Emmy Already” Starr) swore loyalty as his chief enforcer. Butcher (Karl Urban) and Annie (Erin Moriarty) escaped, but the rest of The Boys were rounded up and placed in re-education—er, “Freedom”—camps.

The second season of spinoff series Gen V was set after those events, and the finale concluded with Annie recruiting the main cast members to join the fight against Homelander and the Supes. Season 5 of The Boys picks up where the Gen V finale left off. Per the official premise:

In the fifth and final season, it’s Homelander’s world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims. Hughie, Mother’s Milk, and Frenchie are imprisoned in a “Freedom Camp.” Annie struggles to mount a resistance against the overwhelming Supe force. Kimiko is nowhere to be found. But when Butcher reappears, ready and willing to use a virus that will wipe all Supes off the map, he sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change the world and everyone in it. It’s the climax, people. Big stuff’s gonna happen.

Most of the main cast is returning for the final season (although RIP Claudia Doumit’s Victoria Neuman), and we’ll also see the return of Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), aka Homelander’s daddy, revealed in the S4 finale mid-credits scene to be alive and chilling out in cryostorage. Showrunner Eric Kripke has said that he wanted to delve a little deeper into that father/son relationship, particularly since Soldier Boy has switched sides and aligned with the supes after Butcher tried to kill him in S3.

Kripke has also been pretty open about the fact that all bets are off when it comes to character deaths, since this is the final season. And we can probably expect some of the same disturbing real-world parallels that made S4 so polarizing among fans (although, as Kripke has said, the show has never been subtle about Homelander being evil).

In addition, Jared Padalecki—who co-starred with Ackles in the Kripke series Supernatural—will join the cast in an as-yet-undisclosed role, so it will be a reunion of sorts. This season will also feature several characters from Gen V: Jordan (London Thor), Marie (Jaz Sinclair), Emma/Little Cricket (Lizze Broadway), Cate (Maddie Phillips), Sam (Asa Germann), and Annabeth (Keeya King).

The first two episodes of The Boys’ fifth and final season premiere on April 8, 2026, on Prime Video, with new episodes airing each week through May 20, 2026. But it won’t be the end of the franchise. We don’t know yet if Gen V is getting a third season—it likely depends on who survives the showdown with Homelander and the Supes—but there is a prequel series, Vought Rising, in the works—starring Ackles and Aya Cash reprising their Soldier Boy and Liberty/Stormfront roles, respectively—as well as The Boys: Mexico.

Credit: Prime Video

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